Waking up in a tent in Cascade Locks, Oregon and watching the sky turn cotton candy pink over the Columbia River and the surrounding mountains, surrounded by tents and bivys and sleeping bags and sleepy people holding steaming cups of coffee was not the most...

You had a recent epiphany. Some may call it a life crisis, but we get you—we'll call it an epiphany. You want to thru-hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Class of 2018. As in, a few short months from now.
Maybe it's the promise of a new...

"Zeros and Neros Welcome"
A few years ago, before I started hiking the PCT, I would have guessed this sign was inviting losers and fiddlers to stop by.
It's actually part of a whole new language you learn on the trail. Situated near Mile 127, this sign...

Section K
September 1 – 8
Food. I’m gonna get food. There’ll be lots of food. I want all the food.
Don’t rain. Smoke is better than rain. No rain. It’s raining. Aagh!
Bus leaves High Bridge at 0945. Make miles. Can’t miss the bus. I can make the...

Weather curveballs, wildfire detours, and other challenges are nothing new for Pacific Crest Trail hikers. But this year brought an unprecedented amount of difficulties for thru-hikers tackling the legendary 2,650-mile route from Mexico to Canada. Record snowpack. Swollen rivers. Raging wildfires in the Pacific Northwest...

Ah, the Pacific Crest Trail. Maybe you’ve heard of it before? Also pronounced “Pee See Tee?” It’s the world-renowned long trail. And by long trail, we mean that you are supposed to hike the whole long thing in one shot. It’s 2,650 miles of muscular, tanned, stinky thru-hikers....

Few people aspire to hike the PCT in Southern California in summer. Thru-hikers are long gone, focused on snow-melt in the Sierras and reaching Canada by September. Wildfire season is settling in, causing trails—and the roads leading to them—to close at a moment’s notice.
And it’s...

July is by far the most popular time to hike on the Pacific Crest Trail in Washington. And for good reason! The weather is great, the meadows show off their vibrant array of wildflowers, and many of the alpine lakes are just getting warm enough to...

The trails in the Sierra and the PCT are so engrained in our 50 years as guidebook publishers that it's hard to imagine a time before the iconic Pacific Crest Trail weaved its way from Mexico to Canada. Yet Wilderness Press was already a year...

Before there was Cheryl Strayed, there was Catherine Montgomery.
In 1926, almost a century before Strayed’s best-selling memoir about her Pacific Crest Trail experience was published, Montgomery came up with the idea of creating a ridgeline track from Canada to Mexico.
It seems fitting to pay tribute...